Some thoughts on pop-tarts, bad sushi, manga eyes and processed meat

Headbang8 (at Deutschland über Elvis) asks some important questions about The American Way:

Shovel enough Oldsmobiles, Pop-Tarts, Magnavoxes and Cheez-Whiz in my direction, and do I really need to marry the man I love? If my supermarket shelves are well stocked, is it important that the local library's shelves are not?

He also has revealed to me that the 'sushi' that I -- every once in a while, like when travelling in London -- have enjoyed so much is probably something that does not even deserve the name:

Now, I don't want to be one of those insufferable expats who once lived in Japan, and spends the rest of his life scoffing at amateur Japanophiles in the West. But really, Europeans have no fucking clue about Japanese food.

This taste test in the UK asked a respected Japanese chef to rate the food from London's most popular sushi restaurants. None rated above a three out of ten. These offerings achieved the the near-impossible; they made a Japanese person say something rude.

Damn.

In other Japanophile news, an American woman who refers to herself as 'Magibon' has apparently become a minor phenomenon in Japan by...staring at her webcam, making manga eyes at the viewer and striking cute poses.

I'm not going to embed the video, because I find it somehow too weirdly disturbing, but should you wish, click away on the above link to Tokyomango (via BoingBoing).

Who also informs us:

American processed meats have a huge fan base in Japan. Hot dogs and spam were introduced to Okinawa by American soldiers during the US Occupation. [...] Japan has serious hot dog fever—convenience stores sell at least two different kinds of hot dogs carefully wrapped in plastic, and they even have yakisoba in hot dog buns.

Interesting.

And for reasons I can't explain, it makes me feel better about our lack of authentically good sushi.

Jonestown, 30 years on

To mark the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown mass-murder/suicide, Boing-Boing has offered a useful series of posts looking back at the cult and the shocking series of events that marked its end.

Among them was one that featured a video of a PBS documentary that, if you have some time to spare, is definitely worth watching.

I had grown up knowing about Jonestown (it happened when I was 8), and 'don't drink the Kool-Aid' had quickly become a joking reference to any form of extreme cultish devotion.

However, I don't think I have, before now, really spent time considering where the movement came from and the horrifying details of that fateful day, 18 November 1978.

The documentary is quite a thoughtful, and even in some ways sympathetic, view of the cult's early days. But it packs quite a punch by the end.



I read Haruki Murakami's fascinating book Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, which focuses on the Aum Shinrikyo cult, last year.

The two movements had very different cultural contexts and explicit notions about the world.

But still, you see a similar appeal attaching to such movements among people searching for something...more?...than the ordinary world provides them with.

These movements are, at the same time, terribly ordinary and terrifyingly strange.